Sison Slams False Charges

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement by Jose Maria Sison. Sison is a leading figure in the movement to free the Philippines from United States domination. The Bush administration has falsely accused Sison of ‘terrorism’ and is trying to criminalize the Filipino people’s fight for national liberation.

Reported Murder Charges Have No Factual and Legal Basis, are Politically Motivated and Meant to Deceive the People

By Prof. Jose Maria Sison NDFP Chief Political Consultant

Several times every year, Philippine reactionary authorities make the propaganda that they are filing charges of rebellion and the common crime of murder against me. But always the allegations are invalid and ineffective because they lack factual and legal basis and because the Philippine authorities have no jurisdiction over my person.

My Philippine lawyers have always competently and successfully fended off these false allegations. Once more they are ready to take the appropriate legal actions to defend me from what are now being publicized as charges of murder to be filed against me in connection with the deaths of Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara in 2003 and 2004.

There is no factual and legal basis for charging me with murder for the deaths of Kintanar and Tabara. The false allegations are politically motivated and meant to deceive the people and divert their attention from the criminal culpabilities of the Arroyo regime for electoral fraud, corruption and gross human rights violations.

Moreover, I am beyond the jurisdiction of the Philippine authorities under Philippine and international law. There is no extradition treaty between the Philippine and Dutch government. I am also protected by the Refugee Convention and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits the Dutch government from expelling me to anywhere I am in danger of torture and other ill treatment.

By their official statements appearing in www.philippinerevolution.org and other publications, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army have long admitted responsibility for giving battle to Kintanar and Tabara as armed and dangerous agents of the reactionary government, who committed serious crimes against the revolutionary forces and the people. They consider as acts of the revolution what they have done to the two.

The leadership of the CPP and the national command of the NPA are in the Philippines.

I should not be misrepresented as the omnipotent entity making decisions for the CPP and NPA. I am simply the chief political consultant of the NDFP negotiating panel.

The false accusations against me for rebellion and the common crime of murder are monotonously recurrent and are barefaced lies. They fail to draw away the attention of the people from the culpability of the Arroyo regime for the murder of more than 680 legal activists, the forced disappearance and torture of some hundreds more and the massive military assaults on the working people in the various regions.